1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to information systems such as data processing, communication and storage systems.
2. Description of Related Art
A number of factors are significantly increasing the cost of operating data centers and other information facilities. These factors include constantly increasing demands for additional data storage capacity, increasing demand for processing capacity, rising energy prices, and computers and storage systems that are consuming more electricity and requiring greater cooling capacity. Consequently, there has been a rapid growth in the density and power consumption of equipment at data centers and other information systems. To attempt to deal with these factors, a patchwork of solutions has been adopted. For example, some businesses try to pack equipment more densely into a single area to better use available floor space, while others try to spread out the equipment to reduce overheating problems. Nevertheless, if current trends continue, many information systems will soon have insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet their needs due to the increasing density of equipment and rapid growth in the scale of the systems.
Maintaining an appropriate temperature in computer equipment in high-density data storage and processing environments is needed to avoid failure of this equipment. Because air conditioning and circulation to cool equipment accounts for approximately one half of the electric power consumed in a typical information system, one solution for decreasing electricity consumption is through better management of the heat generated by the equipment and through more efficient cooling of the equipment in the information system.
Moreover, major equipment in information systems now have a capability that includes controlling power consumption based on the load on the equipment. For example, when a processer processes a program requiring a high processing load (i.e., a high load), the processer may consume a large amount of power. However, when the processer has almost no processing load (i.e., a low load) the processer is able to reduce power consumption by shifting to an idle mode that includes slowing down its clock speed (operating frequency). Thus, some equipment, such as servers and other components in an information system, are able to control power consumption according to the load for each component.
Related art includes U.S. Pat. No. 6,987,673, to French et al., entitled “Techniques for Cooling a Set of Circuit Boards within a Rack Mount Cabinet”, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. However, the prior art does not disclose technology for managing and controlling locations of heat sources in information systems. The management and control of the amount of heat generated at specific locations in an information system can aid in achieving more efficient cooling, and thereby reduce the amount of electricity consumed. Thus, there is a need for better methods of managing and controlling heat distribution in facilities having a high density of equipment.